“Animals in Motion” is a collection of poems and introductory essay exploring intersections between people’s representations of animals and their relationships to animals in the context of current ecological crises. While the essay investigates the age old practice of using animal remains as aesthetic material in representations of animals from cave art to de-extinction science, the poems re-render some of these representations in an attempt to illuminate their underlying anthropocentric anxieties about the transience of the material animal body. Employing ekphrasis as their primary method, the poems intentionally blur these source images with their animal referents and human viewers in hopes of coaxing into the foreground the common imagination that governs them—an imagination that seeks to ward off human death by propping up specters of animal life.
","abstract_html":"<p>“Animals in Motion” is a collection of poems and introductory essay exploring intersections between people’s representations of animals and their relationships to animals in the context of current ecological crises. While the essay investigates the age old practice of using animal remains as aesthetic material in representations of animals from cave art to de-extinction science, the poems re-render some of these representations in an attempt to illuminate their underlying anthropocentric anxieties about the transience of the material animal body. Employing ekphrasis as their primary method, the poems intentionally blur these source images with their animal referents and human viewers in hopes of coaxing into the foreground the common imagination that governs them—an imagination that seeks to ward off human death by propping up specters of animal life.</p>","abstract_has_math":false,"creators":["Colley, Ashley"],"institution":null,"degree_name":"Ph.D.","degree_level":"Dissertation","degree_discipline":null,"degree_department":null,"school":null,"contributors":["Graham Foust"],"advisors":[],"committee_chairs":[],"committee_members":[],"year":2021,"date_issued":"2021-06-01T07:00:00Z","date_published":"2021-06-01T07:00:00Z","updated_at":"2026-07-24T02:01:25Z","subjects":["Creative writing","Poetry","Arts and Humanities"],"languages":["en"],"rights":["Copyright is held by the author. This work may only be accessed by members of the University of Denver community. The work is provided by permission of the author for individual research purposes only and may not be further copied or distributed. User is responsible for all copyright compliance.
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"],"dc:subject":["Creative writing","Poetry","Arts and Humanities"],"dc:title":["Animals in Motion"],"thesis:degree_level":["Dissertation"],"thesis:degree_name":["Ph.D."]},"updated_at":"2026-07-24T02:01:25Z"}